Chapter I. In Which I Am Late For School.


On a certain bright morning in the month of May, 1843, the little
port of Stromness wore an aspect of unwonted commotion. The great
whaling fleet that every year sailed from this place for the
Greenland fisheries was busily preparing for sea. The sun was
shining over the brown hills of Orphir, and casting a golden sheen
over the calm bay. Out beyond the Holms the whaling ships lay at
anchor, the Blue Peter flying at each forepeak, and between them
and the town many boats were passing to and fro.

I remember the day, not so much in connection with the whaling
ships themselves as by the fact that their sailing fixes upon my
memory the date of other more personal events which I am about to
set forth in the following pages. Indeed, I was altogether
unaffected by the departure of the ships. As I sat on the edge of
one of the tiny stone piers that support the old houses along the
shoreline, my bare feet dangling above the clear green water, I
thought only of my fishing line and of the row of bright-scaled
sillocks that lay on a stone at my side, being quite unmindful that
the school bell had long since begun to ring.

A small boat passed within a few yards of the jetty, rowed by Tom
Kinlay, one of my schoolfellows.

"Now, then, Ericson," he cried out as he saw me; "d'ye not hear the